My name is Terry Callahan and I work as an RN (bedside med-surg) and I absolutely love it but I started the Secret Shelfie business simply because there was nothing available like it on the market. I just can’t stand the thought of pillows being tossed willy nilly onto surfaces that continually attract clutter or even worse, the floor, so that was my one and only motivation. Seriously, starting a business is worse than buying a boat. I suppose I wouldn’t have done it but I’m just stubborn and my husband is very patient.
We live at a little lake in rural Kentucky and we have strong beliefs in supporting local business, making things in America and doing things the right way. My actual story is crazy long and if it’s too much for you, I won’t be offended if you don’t read it. I just want you to know that I’m a real person and I sincerely want to make your life better, one pillow at a time.
The Actual Story:
You must be a little curious about how the Secret Shelfie came to be or else you wouldn’t be reading this so here we go.
It’s hard to do a search online or pick up a hard copy of anything that references bedrooms without seeing beautiful beds with carefully placed, gorgeous pillows. Of course! They are the proverbial “icing on the cake”. I am no exception to wanting the icing on the cake so when I totally restored a 1909 house in the historic district in Asheville, NC back in 2000, I had the most gorgeous, beaded pillows on my bed. If you’ve ever lived in an old house, you know that coal dust seeps out of the cracks forever and never stops. So there’s that. We also had 2 cats. Even though I was not yet a nurse, I knew that the floor was not an acceptable place for my pillows but the blanket chest at the end of my bed was not really an option for the pillows either because they slide off and onto the floor. I laid in bed one night staring at a rectangular print on my wall and envisioned the framed print folding down to create a shelf to hold pillows. I thought there had to be something like that out there somewhere. This was way before you could just find anything on the internet. I scoured Bed, Bath and Beyond and beyond and beyond that but nothing was out there.
Now, I must explain that at this time in my life, I was selling lumber to builders (AKA contractor sales) while raising 2 teenagers by myself, remodeling/restoring old houses, serving an assistant scoutmaster, on the board of directors at the Homebuiders Association and on and on. I had no interest in starting a business. The pillows would have to wait.
in 2004, I left the building business to start a new career in real estate, hoping for less stress and more financial security. It gave me both but along with that, I gained new insight into people’s lifestyles, design flaws and decor faux pas. Oh my goodness. I developed an extreme dislike for “too much furniture” as well as “clutter blindness”. I was gravitating to a minimalistic mindset but in actuality, everything just needs its’ own space. That’s literally the key to beautiful living spaces. So when pillows don’t have a perfect place to be at night, they end up when they shouldn’t be, not unlike my teenagers.
In 2008, life changed drastically with the Great Recession. Houses literally just stopped selling in my area and I had to reinvent myself again. Fast forward to January 2011, I moved to Kentucky after hemorrhaging money for 2 years and started over. I married my best friend in rural Kentucky and went back to school to be a nurse. All of my other degrees did not help at this point in life. An Art degree with a minor in Interior Design, a Drafting and Design degree were just part of who I am but I needed to be practical and I never wanted to be unemployed again.
I began my nursing career in 2014 and by 2019, we had added a master bedroom. We had dogs and cats and “wood” floors so when I wanted some beautiful extra bed pillows to prop my head on at night, it was like déjà vu. There was no place for my pillows at night. I had plenty of room for chairs, benches etc to set pillows on but I found that these empty horizontal surfaces sucked clutter right out of my husband’s hand and on to those surfaces just like magic. Well, that wasn’t something I was going to fight over. Once again, I searched but this time on the internet and again, there were no wall mounted, fold out shelves to put pillows on at night. This time I set out to make a prototype and the first Secret Shelfie was born.
In April of that year, my husband talked me into pitching to Shark Tank because they were going to be in Louisville so there we were, prototype in hand. I actually got “the call back” to do a long video and 30 page application but that’s as far as it went. With no actual sales, website, production etc, I wasn’t really upset but it did give me the encouragement to move forward. By February 2020, I was actually growing the business but by March 2020, we all know what happened. Yep, Covid 19. As a nurse, my duties were to be an essential worker so I put the Secret Shelfie on the shelf for a couple years.
By 2023, I tried to relaunch but I found that so much had changed. I had to re-learn social media and it was time to make changes on my product. Farmhouse was out and manufacturing now required different machinery. We had moved so I had to build a shop. In 2025, I sourced a wonderful Amish cabinet shop for manufacturing so that I could focus on marketing and to be able to work full time as a nurse.
Well it’s 2026 and here we are telling this crazy story. I appreciate all the kind words from people that I don’t even know. I’ll try to not let you down.